Bill Walczak’s April 16 column, “Change moves at the speed of trust,” takes issue with Mayor Wu’s administration’s approach to planning and zoning reform. In particular, the piece decries advancing the Boston Planning and Development Agency’s (BPDA) Squares + Streets zoning and planning initiative.

In contrast, we would like to express our enthusiastic support for Squares + Streets and its goals.

We can all agree that the City of Boston’s development process is broken, but what often puts community members at odds with each other are the potential fixes to the problem. The existing process for development review is a chaotic one. Almost all of the homes in Boston today would be illegal to build under current zoning. By-right development – that is, proposals that conform to the zoning code and can be permitted after a simple city review process – are exceedingly rare. Builders must carry out an often-lengthy community process and then go before the Zoning Board of Appeal (ZBA) to plead their case for variances. Then, it’s anyone’s best guess whether the body votes to approve or deny a project. This lack of predictability understandably breeds distrust in, and discontent with, the system.

According to a CommonWealth Beacon article, Boston saw nearly 1,100 applications for zoning variances in 2019. Over a similar time period, New York, a city with 13 times the population of Boston, saw only 50 variance applications. Most of our nation’s 25 most populous cities see fewer than 150 variance applications annually. Our disproportionate need for variances is a direct result of our overly restrictive, labyrinthine zoning code, which Professor Sara C. Bronin, describes as “bloated, outdated, inconsistent, and inequitable” in her report, “Reforming the Boston Zoning Code.”

To demonstrate this, Bronin analyzed the number of pages of zoning code text per square mile of land mass of cities with similar population sizes to that of Boston. Among the eight cities used for comparison, the average figure was about 3 pages of zoning code text per square mile. Boston comes in at a whopping 80 pages per square mile. It seems no matter which metric you look at, Boston is an extreme outlier.

Worse, the widespread use of overly complicated and restrictive zoning came out of an intentional and admitted desire to segregate and exclude people of color, lower-income households, and immigrants from certain communities, as demonstrated by public policy researcher Amy Dain’s 2023 report, “Exclusionary by Design,” which documents extensive evidence of this intent throughout Massachusetts over the last 100 years, including planning documents, government reports, and press.

The arduous approval process necessitated by our current zoning code has long brought about calls to undertake rezoning citywide and Squares + Streets is a step in that direction. In this initiative’s first stage, BPDA planners developed a series of six new, simplified districts for consideration to be added to the zoning code. They have now been adopted into the zoning code following the approval of the Boston Zoning Commission by a vote of 7-1 after months of the BPDA soliciting public input through meetings, workshops, office hours, surveys, and pop-ups.

Next, for each small area targeted in this initiative, the BPDA will conduct a 6-9 month-long planning process during which agency staff will be embedded in the community and public input will be paramount as they work to map these districts to specific geographies.

Squares + Streets is built on zoning best practices that have been successful in many other communities. We’ve long known that concentrating development in areas with transit and commercial amenities limits vehicle trips, takes advantage of existing infrastructure, and brings new customers to our local businesses. The initiative kicked off with Roslindale Square and Hyde Park’s Cleary Square, with Dorchester’s Fields Corner and Codman Square soon to follow.

The speed with which the Squares + Streets initiative is advancing rightfully meets the moment we find ourselves in – a severe housing crisis. We must act quickly to make the development process more straightforward and predictable. We cannot afford to delay, reduce, or, in some cases, outright kill new housing proposals.

With fewer proposals needing to appear before the ZBA, the need for lengthy community processes in which elected officials, civic organizations, and residents often cause developments to come to a screeching halt will be eliminated. In his column, Bill Walczak states that “Communities often have near unanimity opposing granting variances for developments based on reasonable concerns...” This presumably refers to local neighborhood associations, whose members frequently vote in opposition to proposals for myriad reasons.

These associations, while well-intentioned, do not represent the entire community, and should not have ultimate veto power in development matters. They skew toward a demographic with the time, energy, and resources to devote to showing up for meetings, de facto excluding those with family, work, educational, or other obligations whose schedules make it difficult to take the time to spend an hour in a church basement one weeknight per month. This is hardly a representative cross-section of the communities they are active in. The robust Squares + Streets engagement process is undoubtedly incorporating feedback from a much broader, more diverse audience than attendance of typical development review or neighborhood association meetings.

The hope is that Squares + Streets will set the stage for widespread change in Boston’s zoning code, making for a more efficient, predictable, and equitable development process. The small, targeted areas set to undergo rezoning under this initiative will serve as a powerful proof of concept. We must streamline the zoning code to make it easier to not only build more housing, but also to provide the amenities which serve that housing. Squares + Streets seeks to do both by allowing for more density and variety in our vibrant, transit-served, mixed-use districts. It will be a valuable model for eventual citywide rezoning and a key part of addressing our city’s severe housing crisis.

We are glad to see the BPDA advancing this with the urgency this moment calls for and we look forward to the much-needed change this will usher in to our communities.

Nevin Lorden serves on the steering committee of Dorchester Growing Together, a civic organization founded in 2018 to advocate for building abundant housing at all price points throughout Dorchester, to alleviate the housing crisis, and to preserve a welcoming diverse community.